Sunday: January 19, 2003   0001 GMT Astronauts 'batting 1,000' in space research Two days into one of the most ambitious shuttle science missions in years, the commander of the shuttle Columbia said his dual-shift team has encountered remarkably few problems and that "things are going really well."    FULL STORY    NASA TELEVISION SCHEDULE    ASTRONAUTS' MASTER FLIGHT PLAN See more coverage here:       Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: WATCH CBS NEWS INTERVIEW WITH ASTRONAUTS QT or RV    VIDEO: CNN'S MILES O'BRIEN CHATS WITH CREW QT or RV    VIDEO: SATURDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Saturday: January 18, 2003   0230 GMT Crew shares some of their launch day experiences Columbia commander Rick Husband on Friday downlinked video footage recorded aboard the shuttle during Thursday's launch, including views inside the cockpit during ascent and the external fuel tank after it was jettisoned. Clips are available to our Spaceflight Now Plus subscribers: Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: IN-CABIN VIEW OF LIFTOFF QT or RV    VIDEO: CREWMEMBERS HEAD TO WINDOWS TO SEE TANK QT or RV    VIDEO: THE JETTISONED EXTERNAL TANK MOVES AWAY QT or RV    VIDEO: ORBITAL MANEUVERING ENGINE FIRING QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Experiment activations on track aboard Columbia While it's not unusual these days to turn on the TV and watch construction projects going on in outer space, it is a bit out of the ordinary when ants - not astronauts - are the ones doing the building.    FULL STORY Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: FRIDAY'S MISSION STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Friday: January 17, 2003   0502 GMT Shuttle Columbia rockets into orbit for science flight With fighter planes and radars scanning the sky for intruders, the shuttle Columbia thundered away on a marathon 16-day science mission Thursday, carrying a crew of seven - including the first Israeli astronaut - scores of experiments and a menagerie of animal and insect research subjects.    FULL STORY    MISSION STATUS CENTER    LAUNCH EVENTS TIMELINE Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: COLUMBIA BLASTS OFF ON ITS SCIENCE MISSION QT or RV    VIDEO: PAD PARAMETER CAMERA REPLAY OF LIFTOFF QT or RV    VIDEO: VIEW ATOP THE VEHICLE ASSEMBLY BUILDING QT or RV    VIDEO: LAUNCH VIEW FROM COMPLEX 39 PRESS SITE QT or RV    VIDEO: ENGINEERING VIEW FROM PAD CAMERA 063 QT or RV    VIDEO: SEE SHUTTLE 'TWANG' DURING IGNITION QT or RV    VIDEO: TRACKING CAMERA IN FRONT OF PAD 39A QT or RV    VIDEO: VIEW FROM CAMERA ATOP WATER TOWER QT or RV    VIDEO: CLOSE-UP OF MAIN ENGINE IGNITION QT or RV    VIDEO: POWERFUL TRACKER AT PATRICK AFB QT or RV    VIDEO: STS-107 POST-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE QT or RV    VIDEO: NASA ADMINISTRATOR NEWS CONFERENCE QT or RV    VIDEO: CREW SEATED FOR PRE-LAUNCH SNACK QT or RV    VIDEO: ASTRONAUTS DEPART THEIR QUARTERS TODAY QT or RV    VIDEO: COMMANDER HUSBAND CLIMBS INTO HIS SEAT QT or RV    VIDEO: FIRST ISRAELI ASTRONAUT BOARDS THE SHUTTLE QT or RV    PANORAMA: 360-DEGREE VIEW OF COLUMBIA ON THE PAD QT    VIDEO: WEDNESDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: TUESDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: MONDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: DETAILED OVERVIEW OF COLUMBIA'S MISSION QT or RV    VIDEO: MEET THE SEVEN COLUMBIA ASTRONAUTS QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Researchers seek 'heart' of black hole mystery New research, funded by NASA and the University of Tokyo, has shown astronomers may not yet have uncovered the mystery at the heart of one of the Galaxy's oldest star systems, the globular cluster M15.    FULL STORY Vital signs of life on distant worlds Detecting Earth-sized planets is hard enough but how does an astrobiologist decide which of them are inhabited? Scientists are now working to understand what signals life might give off into space, so that when they do detect Earth-like planets they know what to look for.    FULL STORY Thursday: January 16, 2003   0345 GMT Shuttle to launch Thursday The protective rotating service structure was rolled away from space shuttle Columbia at launch pad 39A late this afternoon as technicians began preparations to load a half-million gallons of super-cold propellants into the ship overnight. Liftoff remains scheduled for 10:39 a.m. EST Thursday at the opening of a 2 1/2-hour launch window.    MISSION STATUS CENTER - updates!    NASA TELEVISION SCHEDULE    LAUNCH EVENTS TIMELINE    ASTRONAUTS' MASTER FLIGHT PLAN See more coverage here:       Video coverage for subscribers only:    PANORAMA: 360-DEGREE VIEW OF COLUMBIA ON THE PAD QT    VIDEO: WEDNESDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: TUESDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: MONDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: DETAILED OVERVIEW OF COLUMBIA'S MISSION QT or RV    VIDEO: MEET THE SEVEN COLUMBIA ASTRONAUTS QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Mission preview: Columbia's research flight The shuttle Columbia is poised for blastoff Thursday on a marathon 16-day microgravity research mission, carrying scores of experiments and a menagerie of animal, plant, insect and human research subjects, including the first Israeli astronaut.    FULL STORY Stellar cocoons found in harsh environment Astronomers have discovered dozens of potential stellar cocoons within the hostile environment of the Carina Nebula, including some oddballs with bulbous heads, irregular shapes and long, thin tails. Each of these objects may harbor disks of gas and dust that could one day form planetary systems.    FULL STORY Earth's clock of life In its 4.5 billion years, Earth has evolved from its hot, violent birth to the celebrated watery blue planet that stands out in pictures from space. But in a new book, two noted University of Washington astrobiologists say the planet already has begun the long process of devolving into a burned-out cinder, eventually to be swallowed by the sun.    FULL STORY Two Americans take spacewalk outside station Space station commander Kenneth Bowersox and science officer Donald Pettit completed a six-hour, 51-minute spacewalk Wednesday to help deploy a huge radiator panel and to carry out other tasks necessary for ongoing station assembly work. It was the 50th spacewalk dedicated to the international space station.    PREVIEW STORY    MISSION STATUS CENTER Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: SPACEWALK PREVIEW NEWS BRIEFING QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Wednesday: January 15, 2003   0400 GMT Rocket issues keep Rosetta grounded indefinitely The European Space Agency's ambitious Rosetta comet explorer has been grounded indefinitely due to continuing concerns with the Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket that will launch the costly probe, forcing scientists to replan the mission for liftoff sometime in the future.    FULL STORY Space station spacewalk on tap Wednesday Space station commander Kenneth Bowersox and science officer Donald Pettit are gearing up for a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk Wednesday to help deploy a huge radiator panel and to carry out other tasks necessary for ongoing station assembly work.    FULL STORY    MISSION STATUS CENTER Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: SPACEWALK PREVIEW NEWS BRIEFING QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Next week's Titan 4B rocket launch delayed The Air Force has postponed next Tuesday's planned liftoff of a Lockheed Martin Titan 4B rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The reasoning behind the delay is expected to be announced tomorrow. The rocket will carry the sixth and final Milstar military communications satellite. Experiment stowage begins Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center were spending Tuesday loading experiment samples, subjects and hardware into a Spacehab module in the shuttle Columbia's cargo bay in preparation for launch Thursday on a microgravity research mission. With no technical problems at pad 39A, forecasters continue to predict a 95 percent chance of good weather during Columbia's launch window.    FULL STORY See more coverage here:       Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: TUESDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: MONDAY'S COUNTDOWN STATUS BRIEFING QT or RV    VIDEO: DETAILED OVERVIEW OF COLUMBIA'S MISSION QT or RV    VIDEO: MEET THE SEVEN COLUMBIA ASTRONAUTS QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Tuesday: January 14, 2003   0317 GMT Three new moons found around Neptune A team of astronomers has discovered three previously unknown moons of Neptune. This boosts the number of known satellites of the gas giant to eleven. These moons are the first to be discovered orbiting Neptune since the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989, and the first discovered from a ground-based telescope since 1949.    FULL STORY NASA starts counting down to Thursday's shuttle launch Countdown clocks began ticking late Sunday for launch of the shuttle Columbia Thursday on a 16-day microgravity research mission featuring dozens of high-tech experiments and a seven-member crew that includes the first Israeli astronaut.    FULL STORY See more coverage here:       Early afterglow of gamma-ray burst caught A team of University of California, Berkeley, astronomers say that its robotic telescope has captured one of the earliest images ever of the visible afterglow of a gamma-ray burst. The telescope started its exposures 108 seconds after the burst was detected by the HETE-2 satellite and continued for more than 2.5 hours, until brightening of the dawn sky halted the observations.    FULL STORY Monday: January 13, 2003   0720 GMT Delta 2 pulls double duty with launch of two satellites Two NASA spacecraft -- one that will bounce laser beams off Earth to gauge environmental changes, the other to study relics of a supernova explosion in our galactic neighborhood -- rode a Boeing Delta 2 rocket into orbit Sunday from California.    FULL STORY    MISSION STATUS CENTER Video coverage for subscribers only:    VIDEO: FIVE-MINUTE CLIP OF THE DELTA 2 ROCKET LAUNCH QT or RV    VIDEO: AERIAL VIEW OF DELTA SOARING AT SUNSET QT or RV    VIDEO: REPLAY FROM CAMERA BEHIND THE PAD QT or RV    VIDEO: LAUNCH ANGLE FROM IN FRONT OF PAD QT or RV    VIDEO: VIEW OF UMBILICALS PULLING AWAY AT LIFTOFF QT or RV    VIDEO: NASA LAUNCH MANAGER'S POST-FLIGHT COMMENTS QT or RV    VIDEO: WATCH FRIDAY'S PRE-LAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE QT or RV    VIDEO: NARRATED OVERVIEW OF THE ICESAT MISSION QT or RV    VIDEO: COMMENTS FROM ICESAT PROJECT SCIENTIST QT or RV    VIDEO: ANIMATION OF CHIPSAT ORBITING EARTH QT or RV    VIDEO: COMMENTS FROM CHIPSAT PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR QT or RV    SUBSCRIBE NOW Shuttle countdown to begin NASA managers have given approval to begin the three-day launch countdown for Thursday's blastoff of space shuttle Columbia on a microgravity science mission. The decision was made during a teleconference Sunday to review the health of critical bearings in the ship's fuel lines. The final resolution of the technical issue will be made during a management meeting Tuesday.    EARLIER STORY See more coverage here:       Hypergiant erupts An international team of astronomers announced last week that they have observed a huge eruption by a hypergiant star that blasted nearly 10,000 times the mass of the Earth into space. The star Rho Cassiopeiae lost more mass than in any other stellar eruption observed by astronomers.    FULL STORY Coronal activity may be buried alive in red giants When Earth's sun expands into a red giant star in roughly five billion years, long after Earth has become uninhabitable, the hydrogen core will be burned out and the bloated outer shell will be cool and murky.    FULL STORY				News Archive Jan. 6-12: Farthest known planet discovered; Coriolis launched to track ocean winds, solar storms; ; Nozzle failure doomed Ariane 5 rocket; Biggest zoom lens in space extends Hubble's reach; New lower limit for age of universe claimed. Dec. 30-Jan. 5: China launches fourth Shenzhou capsule; Russian rocket delivers Canadian satellite in space; Ariane 5 launch failure investigation delays Rosetta; Engine 'destroyed' in Proton mission failure; Volcanoes on Jovian moon spew salt into atmosphere. Dec. 23-29: Giant X-ray disk sheds light on elliptical galaxies; Integral's first look at the gamma-ray Universe; First elusive 'dark' gamma-ray burst caught; NASA tests future flight vehicle concepts. Dec. 16-22: Clouds discovered at south pole of Saturn's moon Titan; Workhorse Ariane 4 rocket flies its next to last mission; Titan 2 off till January; Second Delta 4 rocket erected on the launch pad; Young star cluster aglow with mysterious cloud; Six satellite cargos ride Dnepr booster to space. More news  See our weekly archive of space news. The ultimate Apollo 11 DVD This exceptional chronicle of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing mission features new digital transfers of film and television coverage unmatched by any other.  U.S. STORE  U.K. WORLDWIDE STORE Contact us If you have a comment or question for Spaceflight Now, just send us an e-mail.